The ongoing blog about driving growth for financial institutions

Life Event Triggered Marketing

What makes you different? What sets you apart from the competition? The reply is often quickly delivered with conviction – “It’s our people that make us unique.” But how? And… do they really?

Customer service is more than a handshake or a quick smile, and recent studies show that customers are craving a more personal touch from their banking institutions. With everything going digital these days, it can be hard to maintain and build a working customer relationship if those customers never interact with branch staff, forcing banks to connect with their customers in new ways to keep business growth steady.

Savvy bankers are turning to new data sources which encourage a more customer-centric approach to marketing and customer service, one that is driven by the life-events their customers are experiencing. Life events such as a new job, the birth of a child and retirement are stressful, and play a role in how and where the individual chooses to live, shop and bank.

During important life-moments, individuals seek out those they trust for advice and guidance and their financial institution is often at the top of the list. By properly engaging with these customers, a bank or credit union can redefine what “personalized service” truly means, and benefit by building institutional trust, heightening customer experience, providing additional products and services and reducing attrition.

The data is now available to make the bank aware when these critical events are happening in the lives of their customers. Timing is everything. It is important to be flexible and patient because some life events push customers to make instant changes while others may take months to find the right solution for their new life situation. In order to provide the highest level of service, the bank needs to be present when the event occurs and be resourceful as decisions are made. Utilizing the data and being aware of these life events sets a bank up to truly provide a level of customer service that is greater than the competition and build a loyalty that lasts a lifetime.

CS3 Marketing is a firm with deep roots in financial services marketing. Working with banks and credit unions large and small, in the past five years alone, we've helped over 300 financial institutions, we've executed 4,000 initiatives, and we've generated hundreds of thousands of accounts to fuel client growth.